Niksen
- “dutch art of doing nothing”
- “niksen meaning”
- “is niksen a real dutch thing”
- “doing nothing on purpose”
:: COMPARE ::
NiksenvsMindfulness
The short answer
Mindfulness is directed attention to the present, with a technique to practise. Niksen has none — no method, no posture, no goal. One correction to the story usually told here: the contemporary Dutch dictionary does gloss niksen as 'bewust niets uitvoeren', deliberately doing nothing, so the intentionality is not purely an English import. The 1956 dictionary gloss was the plain 'niets doen, luieren', and even the deliberate version leaves nothing to do.
Side by side
| Aspect | Niksen | Mindfulness |
|---|---|---|
| Attention | Undirected | Directed |
| Has a method | No | Yes |
| Dutch connotation | Faintly lazy | — |
| Goal | None | Presence |
Which one you meant
Readers who land here meaning Niksen rather than Mindfulness are usually searching for phrases like “dutch art of doing nothing”, “niksen meaning”, “is niksen a real dutch thing”.
Mindfulness
- “does mindfulness actually work”
- “is mindfulness buddhist”
- “mindfulness side effects”
- “what does sati mean”
Which came first
Niksen. 1784–1785 — The base word niks ('nothing') enters Dutch — not as native vocabulary but borrowed from German dialectal nicks/nix, probably carried in by German soldiers.
- 1784–1785NiksenThe base word niks ('nothing') enters Dutch — not as native vocabulary but borrowed from German dialectal nicks/nix, probably carried in by German soldiers.
- late 1970sMindfulnessJon Kabat-Zinn introduces MBSR, described in the research literature as an intervention package introduced as a complementary therapy for medically ailing individuals.
Where the confusion comes from
“Niksen is a long-standing Dutch cultural philosophy, the Dutch answer to mindfulness.”
The verb is recorded in Dutch print only from 1951 and in dictionaries from 1956, and Dutch dictionaries label it informeel, glossing it 'niets doen, luieren'. It's a colloquialism for idling — roughly 'bumming around' — not a named practice with a tradition behind it.
Read either one in full